1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a pedestrian detection device and a pedestrian detection method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, vehicular night vision devices which pick up and display near-infrared images of an area forward of a vehicle, and detect pedestrians from the picked-up images, and present results of the detection superimposed on the near-infrared images have been put into practical use. As a pedestrian detection technology for use in such a night vision device, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-352974 (JP-A-2005-352974) describes a technology that searches for whether or not a site in a detection object that is the same in shape as a predetermined site in the detection object continuously exists. If the site being the same in shape as the predetermined site continuously exists in the detection object, the technology determines that the object is an artifact, and excludes the object, and proceeds to recognize a pedestrian from the remaining detection objects.
On the other hand, in a real road environment, there relatively frequently occurs a situation in which a plurality of artifacts, for example, guardrail posts, utility poles, etc., exist side by side. In the case where such a plurality of artifacts are extracted as detection objects, that is, candidates for pedestrians, it is necessary in the foregoing technology to search on each of the pedestrian candidates for whether or not a site being the same in shape as a predetermined site continuously exists. To determine whether or not a pedestrian candidate is a pedestrian with respect to all the pedestrian candidates, the technology inevitably requires a long processing time, which is a problem. Therefore, a faster process of determining whether or not a pedestrian candidate is a pedestrian (a faster pedestrian detection process) is desired particularly in systems that require a real-time characteristic of the process, such as a system used in a vehicle that runs at high speed.